


I Don't Write Love Songs

by Elfen1012



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Curse of Strahd, Established Relationship, F/F, Gift Giving, Lost Mines of Phandelver, Mid Canon, Mild Sexual Content, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfen1012/pseuds/Elfen1012
Summary: In the Blue Water in a hidden Tiefling decides to act beyond the character and do something shes never done before. An NPC/PC romance and gift to my friend and player Kizu.
Relationships: Original D&D Character(s)/Original D&D Character(s), Red/Iris
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	I Don't Write Love Songs

**Author's Note:**

> I run a fusion of Lost Mines of Phandolver and Curse of Strahd and for some reason the Local druid player fell in love with my version of The Red Wizard in Lost Mines (I made her an ex slave Monk Wizard cause I'm extra and my party is baring one all queer lady lovers so it worked.) This is a trade to my druid player whose making me sweet art.

“Is this a wizard thing?” 

“No, it’s required for this.”

“Required for what?” 

“Your broken Hurdy Gurdy, we need new trompette strings, it’s going to snap.

“And you know that from the notes?” Urwin Martikov was perhaps by nature the most kind human Red had ever had the pleasure of knowing, besides perhaps his wife Davian, but he was not immune to human nature to ask questions they don’t really care about the answer to. “Did you even bring the thing with you down stairs?” 

“It’s in the trunk,” Red's hoof kicked the wooden box below the bar table. She didn’t have much interest in looking up from the music chart she was scrawling out before her, the marked chart at the top numbered what keys on offer had not been rotted to ruin and what strings she felt were approaching a dangerous condition. “Do you need it back right now?”

“Ignore my husband, he didn't even know what that was before you found it. It's all yours," Davnika cut in placing a glass of fresh purple mash beside. As per usual she never noticed the woman's steps as she glided about the barroom floor, and though Davnika's maternal touch to the back always made Red jump, she didn't hate it. 

"Dearest, I wasn't going to take it from her," Urwin whines, always so sweet with his wife, "I'm just bored miserable. No one's in. Heckling is all that's left for me with the boys and patrons out."

"Master Martikov, enjoy the rest, with preparation for the Wolf festival or whatever it is this week, you should enjoy the first defacto day off this century," Rictovia tossed in unwelcome from his seat at the bar earning a glare from Urwin. 

"Stuff it Boy," Urwin growled as he only did with his boys and curiously that guest, "My day off would be better with music. Show us what you're working on, Miss Red huh?"

"It's not ready," Red muttered, putting her own down. Like it would ever be, the quill would just keep tapping the edge of the page, the title scrawled in both infernal and common Byddaf yn dal Hiris 'I would hold an Iris', "You need to plan your sound first, strings and keys, what isn’t broken. The full plan hasn’t been set up.”

"Hold an Iris huh? Sounds like a love ballad. Is what's there long? You could play it while I finish up your eggs," Davnika asked and rendered Red powerless to deny. She was offering breakfast after all. 

"It's not done," Red cut back, taking the Hurdy Gurdy out despite protest. The madam of the inn smiled and so Red began to prep the keys, ready the failing instruments ignored the warped wheel and spun. 

Red didn't bother looking in their eyes once the short minute of the written song was played. She didn't need their input. Urwin gave his regardless. 

"It's good," he lied, "but a little gloomy for a love song."

* * *

_ I don't get to write love songs. I'm the plays Villain, a heel. My role is to contest and promote the hero. I play the droning hurdy gurdy, heavy, dance worthy, but almost frightening. She plays the lliira gentle and sweet. She gets the love song, I get the remorseful surrender. As blood drips from the brow smearing against the wheel and the audience claps to my defeat. Another show, a song, a speech, a fight and then this. The blood turns with the wheel.  _

* * *

“I am always surprised how many things Barovians can add mint to. With my Allergy there is so much we can buy, sorry, but I don’t know if I wasn’t born lucky, given the smell.” Iris inched her nose, mocking the limited spice collection that went through the ever limited market of Vallaki’s center square, it lacked the fragrance of the sword coast, and their sense of taste. 

Here the city was seen at its most truly genuine. Which was to say unclean, cramped, and struggling to make it in the world with second hand supplies. Barely a mile across, the city kept itself tightly wound in vertical townhouses and squalor apartments, only occasionally cut off by a district of rotting manors from the equally desperate, but unwilling to admit it, Magnars of the city. Despite that Red levied no complaint. The roads were cobbled and cleared enough for her hooves, the street safe enough to walk in the dim grey that counted as a day in Barovia, and Iris was here. She could wrap her tail, invisible thanks to the illusion spell Red had crafted that morning, around Iris’ waist where the body of the Centaur shifted. 

“Don’t worry the Salmon’s unseasoned,” she clarified, letting the torch of the conversation remain in Iris’ palms. She had heard her own voice for too long, and Iris’ never enough.

“I know, you don’t forget about those sorts of things. You’re very smart.” 

“I think that is more your brand of intelligence,  _ Hyfryd _ ,” Red counters with uncharacteristic warmth latched to the title. She had an admitted flaw of always finding some excuse to compliment her lover, “I’m surprised Siras remembers our names,” Red doesn’t sound like she’s joking, but says it all the same knowing Iris wouldn’t mistake her comedy for malice. Much to the surprise, disbelief, and inevitable rejection of Siras himself, Red rather liked the sullen wizard. Much as one might like a broken but long used cart, or an old shirt that fit poorly and all around looked like horse leavings on the best days. Yes. Exactly the way one has fondness for an impressively annoying little brother.

“We share our wisdom then, I don’t really have smarts to share,” she jokes in a way that twists Red’s gut more than whatever counted as a city planner did to the streets of Vallaki. “I do have many things to share however, more than that wolf coat! I must tell you all about our trip, and Miss Ireena! Oh and you would not believe the story of how Flower bested all the hags with mock tax collecting. So many things,” but Iris clapping her hands together and that little double step she did when excited outpowered the feeling.

“You’re very smart. You could have been a wizard,” Red mumbled in protest despite herself. “It sounds like a good story. This Ireena seems to have won you over. She’s pretty. Maybe a little dim of mind, but bright?” Again lacking in malice though she could feel Iris’ frown. “I’m not surprised about Flower, she’s got unusual talents,” perhaps the genuine pride in their mutual adoptive daughter could bite back against Iris’ disappointment, though it did little against the last nagging vestiges of guilt that came with the wonderful wolf pelt cloak. 

“Ireena is very bright. She has been talking to me about morality. What is ‘right’ and  _ why _ , which is the good part. I think we have a lot to learn from each other,” Iris’ defense of her friend was noted by Red, and without much convincing she opted to believe her. She trusted Iris good sense about most everything, and not one fragment of Red desired to fight her about anything. “I would have never thought Flower’s talents would include acting. She snuck us inside their secret layer by pretending to be a tax collector. To be honest I’ve never known one but they believed it for quite a while. And she managed it long enough for Sneep to sneak in from above and save some children. You would have been very proud.”

“I am very proud.”

“Then,” Iris began with a light frown as they turned the corner onto the main street earning eyes from the citizens who walked freely here if nowhere else, “why do you look pained.”

“Not pained, irritated,” Red admitted, knowing better than to fight truth with ill conceived lies, “You’ve been thinking of me I can tell, I really… the coat it’s very warm. I had planned a gift for you, but it’s not ready. I don’t know if it will be. It’s getting under my skin.” 

“You don’t have to get me gifts, you’re a gift,” Iris joked as the Blue Water Inn appeared at the edge of their view, the storied and homely base of our travels here.

“It’s not the same. It’s important to me that we’re… fair with each other.” 

That’s not exactly it but Red has no way to formulate her frustration, her feeling of failure. 

“Well,” Iris’ hand slipped out to hold Red’s as the tiefling used her tail to subtly pull them closer in turn, the tightness of their grips intensifying, “Why don’t you teach me more of your magic. You’re so smart, that can be your gift.” 

Barovia had no sun Red had noted, but it is not the only thing so blindingly bright. 

* * *

_ We both get the same scars, crisscrossing marks to add permanence to our temporary loss of blood. Ressin gets bandages. She must remain pretty. We both get bruises, the cracking of ribs under pressure, the popped blood vessels beneath the skin. She gets roses afterwards while we all agree to pretend at least, that she is beloved by the people who own us. She deserved it, a bright thing in the dark, she deserved every flower, every bandage. But did I? I only know that in the end, I do not get them.  _

* * *

“Nah, I wouldn’t call it gloomy,” Flower ultimately decided from her audience spot on the bed, strange white aasimar hair splay all over her mattress in a tangled mess that outdid even the blanket in terms of coverage. 

“But will she like it?” Red hammered the question with her hands still firmly holding the Hurdy Gurdy she had just played, a nervous finger nearly digging into a key. Nothing ever caused such a cold uneasy sensation in her bones. Red so rarely felt nervous, as she knew better than to trespass into skills not her own. 

Flower made some approximate denial nose matching the shift of her shoulders.

“I’m not her,” she clarified to the benefit of no one, “but I liked it.”

“Thanks,” Reds hands cranked the wheel just to check the sound once more, make sure the whine wouldn’t begin bleeding their ears, “I’m not used to this sort of project. It would be better on a different machine, the wheel is damaged. Too humid.” 

“I don’t know if Iris will like it, but I know she’ll love that you made it.”

“I know, but,” Red grumbled some, eye shifting to look out of the door, her own music easily outweighed by the roaring bar. The Blue Water was the one and only bastion of real life in this city, people, not all people, but people nonetheless expressed genuine life, music played, lovers danced, Red could even hear Windy drinking with Sneep and Patty down below. Iris was there, and Red could even picture the centaurs hands brown with splotches of painted white around a cup of warm tea Danika poured out for her. “I still want it to work. It doesn’t matter, but it feels as if it did. I’m not being clear.”

“I think I get it.” 

Flower shifted onto her elbows, the bottoms of her feet swung back and forth, wrapped to protect them given her history of kicking wolf jaws clean from the hinge. There was a noted pause as her lips shifted to say something gave up and started again.

“Iris talks about you all the time, about how smart you are and the way you talk and move. She adores you, pretty much all of you. I think if she can look at a spider skeleton and make herself a pet, I think she can love a song you worked really hard on. I don’t know but I think it anyway.”

Red shut the Hurdy Gurdy and placed it back on her already cluttered desk from arcane tattoo supplies and assorted notes compiled over their entire quest. The cards, the lore on vampyres, even Siras’ translated pages in the Tome of Strahd they’d be deciphering slowly through it’s rotted and burned pages. 

More than that there were the pages and pages of restructured music notes. Plans tossed rebuilt and reformulated. Notes and replaced keys that stuck from the waste bin to the side, the strings she had purchased just for this one piece to make the right consistent whine. A measurable effort put into restoring the machine to life. 

“I’m glad I can tell you how nervous I am,” Red took the half dozen steps over to Flowers bed, her own tightly wrapped hand offered to pat the head of her ward, a strangely parental urge in her to scratch the head of the monk that had become something of their daughter. Who would have thought Iris would trick her into having a full family. “No one would ever believe you after all.” 

“Given the first time you ran into the nearly the seven foot battering ram that is Windy, you thought ‘oh I’ll just melt her skull’ I don’t think I fully believe it,” Flower releases one of those giggles that reveal exactly how much of her remains just big kid with lots of space to grow up. They were all in their own way, only Iris and Red were touching thirty. Something about that firmed up the need to do something about this terrible place, and the role she had fallen into despite everything, with Iris. Somehow the shadowfell made family out of loners despite its own attempts at dividing them.

“Good, I have certain expectations to uphold.” 

“The Red Devil yeah, I get it. The name is so lame you know.”

Red let out a small chuckle, the smallest smile formed on her lips, Flower had a way of putting it there.

“Unlanders are idiots, ” 

“Yeah, you’re not really devil worthy.”

“Oh, you don’t respect my Power?” Red askes her gentle pats shifted to a nuggie, slight burn built in her hands as she ruffled that little head of hers.

“Nah,” Flower rebels, her yellow eye staring up with enough love Red almost had to step back, “I know you won’t let any of us down.” 

* * *

_ I don’t get happy endings. Our matches are written by people we do not know, we are given scripts and leather whips to see what will happen if it is not followed. With grace and meaning too. She is always the hero, and I am the villain. My role is to be crushed, my ending a warning to all who refute the hero and the culture she pretends to love. My endings are in bloody pools, pretending to be as dead as I wished I was. _

* * *

Ressin use to call Red’s kisses searing, playful hellfire. Even in their early teens that never felt exactly right. She never burned when she kissed, it wasn’t fire or burning. To Red, when she loved someone, it was like being cold everywhere else. It was a hunger to find something warm and survivable. It felt necessary. On the eve before the Festival of The Burning Sun, when Red would depart in a little over thirteen hours for unknown mountains in search of an Amber Temple that would likely leave her strung up, Red needed it. 

“I’ve already said it, but I really want to again, I love you.” 

Iris’ breath wracked as she spoke. The two of them pulled their faces away from the flush of their kiss. Red could feel her body buzz as she let herself laugh. The giddiness of separation not too far out had made them act half their age. The rush when heart ache was coming, but too far out to be all-consuming. Something of a last hurrah

Also helped that Iris had put her against the wall. Not a millimetre of space between them as Red could feel Iris’ fingers spread up her back, and the power of her breath against Red’s lips or neck depending on the moment. 

“I love you too Hyfryd,” Red said, a little mesmerized. Her hands brushed the multicolored painted cheeks of her lover's face. She cupped them with the desperate tenderness one held… no object fit. People had too much value to be objects, their multitudes beyond the purview of items. “I will miss you.” 

Her words were more to inform than to plead. A part of Red worried something was so critically broken in her, that maybe Iris would never know how desperate, shakely, terrifyingly, desperate, her hands were to stay cupping that face. 

“I know, we both will,” Iris smiled so sure, “But you don’t leave till tomorrow. I have so many more things to share with you.” 

Red would have all of them, she wouldn’t bare to give up anything. 

“Please.”

“That is not what I meant,” Iris laughed. Apparently she had clocked Red’s glance at the door, rechecking the room's lock was firmly in place, “Not that I wasn’t considering it,  _ my Heart _ .” 

Those words were planted right against her neck and punctuation by a kiss. 

“Not just that, everything,” Red said in a way almost unintelligible. Hands were moving places, she could hear her pulse rumble past her ears in growing hungry thuds. 

Red’s legs wrapped around Iris’ waist, if only to let her peel away Red’s shirt. She only needed her legs along with her tail to hold herself up and free all their hands for more. 

“Have I ever mentioned that I Iove your strength as well as your mind?” Iris broke off only to compliment. Red laughed, not a mundane resource. The gift of strong abs was not her worst trait. 

“Don’t forget I was an entertainer once.” 

“Oh I am really entertained!” They both could share that laugh. “We will need it in this  _ quaint  _ little room.” 

Centaur struggles made a few things harder. The pillows and blankets laid out on the floor in a space not quite enough for the two of them in ideal circumstances. They would make it work, They made it work sleeping outside the Stonehill Inn drinking Edermath’s Cider, they made it work in wet and rocky camps across the sword coast, they made it work with Sending, messages just 24 words short. 

“I miss home too,” Red replied, the special bed she engineered withstood their strange couple. The way Iris druid vines tugged together the wood Red’s own hands hammered into the earth. They built that place. “We will go back. The hyacinths need to be tended at some point.” 

“And white violets,” Iris blessed a few more kisses to Reds chest before dropping her into the soft folds of her bed where she could look up and find the wild hair of her Hyfryd coming loose, “We will need to fix up the walls too, the Annex isn’t finished.” 

“I have plans, we worked on that tub design, with your Heat Metal I think that will work still,” Red helped this time for Iris to come free of her own blouse, “I need to repaint it too. Clear space for another layer to the garden.” 

“It never ends, does it?” Iris replied, pulling the last boarders away like weeds, and planting thoughts of home all down her chest and belly.

Morning took a solemn texture opposed to the exuberant panic of the night. While dozens of townsfolk managed teams of forced, earnst, and indifferent goers, began to start the Festival of the Burning Sun. Ireena brought them breakfast in bed so they would not be parted from peace to eat. So they could mourn together. 

Tonight Red would sleep on the road, Iris would spend it on carnival games before her own quest, other cards and fortunes, riddles to be done. They didn’t talk much. Some about illusion magic, rebuilding a memory just two days old. Some eating, some beside in silence, just a tail tugging at Iris' arm. 

Morning was dying, and with it the final chances suffocating. In that slow death, Red committed to Flowers assessment. 

“Hyfryd, will you listen to something.”

“My Heart, I would listen to you speak about anything, of course.”

“Would you listen to me play?”

“Yes, I would.”

The Hurdy Gurdy is not a wayward instrument. It requires time, set up. Maintenance. Constantly with untiring and committed hands at the keys. As she worked Iris said nothing, loafed on the floor watching with that usual warmth in her bright grin and clapped together hands. Red loved her smile, often she could smile for both of them.

The strings were set, the wheel began to turn, the sound… was what it would be, warped as the wheel was from timeless abuse and neglect, from losses deep, old muses vanished. From traveling scars and disinterested owners, but it would play. 

“I wrote a song, it’s about you, it’s a love song.” 

The wheel turned faster.

Red never really knew if Iris liked the song for what it truly was. As a piece of music, it was blemished, unsightly, and ill fitting on such an old instrument, but as to the emotion, the art translated. She couldn’t say. Only that thirty minutes later, Iris asked for her hand in marriage.

* * *

“We need to leave soon, the metal men are all over the mountain, we’ve freezing. I told you the Amber Vault is sealed.” 

_ The stone before me is coated with black and white permafrost, It aches something so core inside me that would prefer being licked by fire. No homeless night has ever been as cold as the black rocks here. No winter in Water’s Keep as harsh on the body or as tight in the lungs. Even the wolf skin wrapped over my shoulders couldn’t hold in the warmth against the wind. _

“It’s because Strahd’s scared of what’s inside Anya.” 

_ The mountain cliffside is impossibly solid, and all I have is a single half dead seed. I don’t write love songs or get happy endings.  _

_ " _ That is not a good thing Red One.” 

_ There are cracks in the boulder, places where if just for a night, summer melted a little thimble of ice. A few moments every fourth year. Hours and days summed over the centuries. Crevices can be found. Pock marks to place my seed into the earth.  _

“Red One? What are you doing?” 

_ I don’t write love stories, but we do. I don’t get happy endings without you. We make them, we claw at the earth every day, rake the soil bury the leavings, plant every inch and make it so by pure fucking will, we see it done.  _

“It’s a spell. ‘Red and Iris’ Explosive Growth’.” 

_ We’ll funnel every ounce of the weave if we have to. We will see it done, blooded fingers or not. We will plant the seeds and a future will grow. The roots will peel rocks asunder, Mountains will crack for us, by the gods, by us, we will make them crack.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Red invented a spell with her wife! It's basically a high damage siege and anti-construct spell that doesn't work well against non-constructs. Its her failed attempt to recreat Iris' plant growth. The Magical weave makes it hyper grow and explode out before dying. Third level spell on touch, 8d6 damage, does double against constructs and buildings but half against anything else. Con save single target. Special use case as opposed to like a Fireball, its Wizard and Druid only.


End file.
